


The Princess and the God

by LadyGretchen



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018), Swamp Thing (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen, Minor Kyle/Rogelio, One Shot, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 03:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19863052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyGretchen/pseuds/LadyGretchen
Summary: Perfuma would be lying if she said she knew what to expect from her guest, but she definitely had some idea. Understanding? Probably. Miracles? Perhaps, given what her guest was. Spiritual quests? Okay, granted, than one was probably inevitable all things considered.Of course, there was one consequence that she couldn't have predicted...





	The Princess and the God

Hordak held the ruined pipe up to his eyes, too tired to be angry anymore, and contemplated the war he had lost.

The pipe had been cracked and clogged- first lichen and then moss taken root, slowly cracking and eroding, creeping and growing, until the pipe couldn't take anymore and leaked like a sieve across Hordak's lab. Reflecting in miniature what had happened to the Fright Zone at large. 

The skies clearing up was, with the benefit of hindsight, a warning sign- no, it was the first shot fired. A quick investigation into it had found the cause to be a lichen that could survive the pollution and even clear it up, and with that the case was assumed to be closed. The polluted nature of the Fright Zone was, after all, not an end goal in itself, but a side effect of its industry; so the Horde at large dismissed it as irrelevant.

Irrelevant! Ha! The lichen was the vanguard of an army, acting in plain sight yet utterly invisible, that slowly but surely took apart defences the Horde wasn't even aware that it had. And once the vanguard had done its job, the rest of the troops moved in. These troops never fired a shot, never wielded a weapon, never meant a soul any harm. They simply _grew_. 

The factories and conveyer belts were choked with ivy, ropes of green halting and binding the wheels of industry. The hangers for skiffs and tanks had fallen apart in the face of the great trees erupting from the earth, the natural world shrugging off its chains of steel and concrete. Even the scrapyards were carpeted in daisies and poppies, flowers placed on the mass grave of machinery.

Armouries became orchards, turrets a bouquet. Torture chambers disappeared into the bloom and the foreign sounds of rustling leaves and creaking tree trunks filled the air.

Fighting this army was pointless: everything grew quicker than the Horde could cut down or burn. The Fright Zone was smothered in green, only a few sterile hold outs remained under siege.

A siege, Hordak realised as he stared at the ruined pipe, he had lost. He once had plans to walk once more between stars that no one on this wretched planet even knew existed, but once this "wretched planet" had grown tired of him it had taken every ounce of his energy just to keep his laboratory clear and, as it turned out, he couldn't even manage that. 

If he was honest, Hordak wasn't sure if there _was_ anywhere else holding against the green hell that crawled up his door step. He knew that he hadn't received communications from outside his lab in a long time. He wasn't sure how long- his time keeping devices had run out of power, he couldn't track the position of the Sun from his lab and, well, as he was so busy trying to keep his lab and machinery _functional_ he hadn't been getting sleep as often or as regularly as he needed, which he knew had to be damaging his ability to keep track of time. But he knew it was long enough to know that no one was thinking of helping him.

He wasn't even sure _why_ the plant life of the planet had launched a bloodless yet hostile takeover of the Fright Zone. He would guess it involved that Plumerian princess, but that just raised more questions: she was not an enemy to be taken lightly, and with her desire to hit people with flowers unleashed she would probably appreciate what the Fright Zone had suffered, but there was no evidence that she was _this_ powerful.

But then, in some ways who did this was irrelevant. Hordak had never completely adapted to this planet's atmosphere- his existence always dependent on machines. Machines that broke down in the green grasp of what ever hell had been unleashed. Now that his lab had been infiltrated by the sabotaging spores, Hordak knew that what he once had was over. Trying to maintain what he had meant a constant battle with life and decay that he that he would lose- was already losing.

Instead, forced into the unthinkable, Hordak contemplated the best way he could go about surrendering to the Princess Alliance.

\---

Long had the Parliament of Trees stood, and long would it stand.

It remembered much.

It remembered the time of the tyrant lizard kings, of saurian titans with voices like thunder, and of learning to twist bark leaf and bark into shapes that could join the choirs and kingdoms of the feathered and scaly giants.

It remembered the meteorite that ended these kingdoms- of forests scorched into dust and of decades of the sun blotted out by a sky filled with ash.

It remembered the clever yet foolish dynasty of life that came afterwards and of the cycle it took to interact with these creatures: that old story of a man dying in fire and of new life- a monster or green man or swamp thing- emerging to carry the man's memories.

And it remembered when this clever yet foolish dynasty died- of rain turned to stinging acid and air rendered suffocating, of metal turning to rust and concrete turning to dust.

This was a quiet new age, the sounds of the car and the gun a distant memory on Earth.

Yet the Parliament listened. 

For though animal life on Earth was a shadow of what it once was, they still heard tell of strange goings on among the stars.

From spores carried upon meteorites, they heard that the dynasty that had self exterminated upon the Earth had escaped its gravity- a thousand little kingdoms dotted among the stars.

From algae clinging on in long abandoned space stations, they learned that some of these kingdoms carried on all foolishness their parent dynasty- machine men with machine hearts building cold worlds full of prosperity they thought they couldn't live without until it became just another kind of waste.

And yet, from passing petal-leviathans, freed to grow in microgravity and drift along the solar winds, they heard tales of small dynasty far away that had learned to listen as the forest listens, to talk on equal terms with the flower and the fern.

Mostly, the Parliament just listened- even those who had walked in the mortal world had mostly forgotten how to speak. But one member of the Parliament felt curious. He had once been a hero of sorts in ages past. More ghost than body, he had learned to grow a body again and again from moss and petal, from leaf and bark; escaping death again and again and even abandoning his body so that his spirit could jump between worlds. A risky option if there was no where to land, but he had practice.

And so, perhaps nostalgic for the old times when he could talk with the fleshy mortals, and perhaps curious about this dynasty, he gazed up at the stars.

Decision made, his spirit abandoned his wooden, immobile body.

And _jumped_.

\---

Perfuma sipped her tea, waiting for her nerves to steady before she talked properly with her guest. She wasn't scared of him- assuming her guest was a "him", Perfuma wasn't sure about the degree to which animal notions of gender applied here. Her friends were at least _intimidated_ by her guest, and, to be fair, Perfuma could understand why given how they all first met. No, Perfuma wasn't nervous because she was afraid of her guest: she was nervous because unlike her friends in the Princess Alliance, she had some idea of what her guest _was_ and what the presence her guest _meant_.

Her guest had arrived unannounced. Another wave of Horde robots had struck out, this time marching on Plumeria. And the Princess Alliance had marched out to meet them. The robots were crushed quickly enough- what surprised everyone happened afterwards. For as the princesses celebrated, they were shocked by the plants at their feet moving with rude life. Ferns and flowers and moss wove themselves together; a body built itself before the princesses' very eyes. 

And what an intimidating body it was. He stood as tall as She-Ra, but was bulkier, as if the undergrowth didn't quite understand what a human looked like and got the proportions a little off. A mass of fronds and vines covered the body, shifting with a thousand slow yet deliberate movements; whilst eyes that seemed to glow red peered unblinking from a face that was grown to be less suggestive of a human face and more of a mask or a hood.

Adora, still in her She-Ra form after fighting off the Horde, had moved to confront this creature. Perfuma, with an arm outstretched in Adora's path, had stopped her. Adora had seen a potential threat, but Perfuma knew what this was. When using her powers, Perfuma always had the feeling of touching the surface of something fundamentally _bigger_ than herself, of wandering in the shallows of something far far _deeper_ than she could ever explain to her fellow princesses. This creature was one of the beings that emerged from those depths. Plant elemental. Erl-king. A god among men.

"Hello." When Perfuma moved up to the creature, she spoke in a small, gentle voice; the result of her nervousness warring with her curiousity.

"... Hello." The creature was slow to respond to Perfuma, not having talked to a mortal in a long time and not quite remembering the right words. When it did respond, it talked in slow, deliberate rumble. The plant metaphors that Perfuma had expected to bring up fell apart- the creature gave the impression of something bigger than that, less a tree and more the forest. Landscape that had learned to speak. The creature looked past Perfuma, noticing her less enthused friends. "Please... Do not... Be afraid... I mean you... No harm."

The rest of the Princess Alliance didn't look particularly convinced, but with that Perfuma was certain that she had the right impression about the creature. It was the words he used and more how he said them: quite sincere, but also _awkward_. He was _outside_ of the world of mortals enough that interacting with it didn't come naturally to him- in his own way, he was as nervous as Perfuma. Realising this ensured that her curiosity outweighed her nervousness, enough for Perfuma to ask:

"Would you like to stay here? I mean, Plumeria would be happy to welcome you..." 

Perfuma nervousness grew back as she spoke, making her impromptu invitation trail off into a shy mutter. Looking at Perfuma with some sympathy, the creature relaxed: face curling into a small gentle smile like patterns appearing in tree bark. 

"That... Would be... Good."

\---

A few sips into her tea, and Perfuma's nervousness had vanished. Watching her guest had helped. Once the rest of the Princess Alliance had reluctantly left for their own kingdoms, her guest had settled among Plumeria's people like someone returning home. 

The people of Plumeria had always been ambivalent about many of the "benefits" of civilization, with its schedules and punishing work and "solutions" that just made more problems. Instead, the forest was their orchard and their playground, their world an ever wandering collection of huts and tents, living a non stop pilgrimage following wherever their hearts guided them. A powerful singer or a skilled cook could find herself at the centre of a town of tents overnight, so it was no surprise that a god visiting the mortal realms received the same reception.

As shy as he was when he first arrived, Perfuma's guest didn't seem to mind the company. He treated everyone he met with same contented patience a grandparent would give to a child overeager to show them something: whether it be children making daisy chains with him; hotblooded youths tying a bandanna around his head; or an ageing musician singing nostalgically about the handsome man that seduced him all those years ago.

Yet even the people of Plumeria need to sleep. And so, one by one, the temporary town retreated back to their tents and their huts; the sounds of a party replaced with the sounds of the night. The cricket's chirp and frog's bellowing croak drowning out the near silent gossamer flutter of bat wings and the hissing crackle of the campfire around which this tent town blossomed.

And it was in this near quiet around the campfire that Perfuma and her guest were able to properly talk.

"I never did learn your name," Perfuma was no longer nervous as such, but a bit of awkwardness remained. "I mean, you didn't seem to mind everyone calling you Swampie, but... Well..."

Perfuma's guest didn't really gesture to indicate he was going to say something as such. Instead, he subtly moved like a tree swaying slightly in a breeze, giving out a noise like something moving through a forest's undergrowth. 

"... If you like... You can... Call me Alec... I used to be called Alec... long ago..."

"Alec?" Perfuma wasn't sure what the gods called each other, but she wasn't expecting something that was, well... relatively normal.

"I... Inherited the name... From a human..." Perfuma's guest didn't elaborate. 

"Well... I'm Perfuma." Perfuma wasn't quite sure how to fill the silence pause that followed, not sure how to meet their shared demand for a conversation. Fortunately, Alec had some idea of what to say.

"I came here... After hearing tales of a kingdom... That talked with the Green..."

"The Green?" Perfuma had a moment of confusion, but one that swiftly passed. There was really no question as to what the Green was. "I... Feel it. Whenever I use my powers, I'm reaching out to something bigger than me. But I've... Never felt it reach back. I mean... I think my Mom could."

"... Is your mother..."

"She's dead."

"... I'm... Sorry..."

"Its okay. It's been a long time now." Perfuma shifted uncomfortably. "She... Used to talk with flowers. I mean, I do to, but... With Mom, they could... Talk back. Not like, talking but... They'd talk in a language of colours and pollen and ever so slow movements and Mom would understand. I think she wanted to teach me but... She died before she had the chance."

Perfuma shrunk where she sat. She tried to tell herself that her "its okay" wasn't ringing hollow; that everyone had lost someone in the war fought by the first princess alliance and she was doing nothing by _wallowing_ in her loss; that with the Horde advancing and the world falling apart no one really had a chance to mourn properly and that it was _obviously_ selfish and stupid to want something no one could really afford; and, and, and-

Perfuma's train of thought was cut short first by a heavy but gentle hand on her shoulder, and then by a slow embrace as arms strong as tree trunks held her as tenderly as a lily. She wasn't sure when tears had begun to drip from her face onto his chest.

"It is okay to cry... I have lived... A long time... I know... What it is like... To lose someone..."

\---

Perfuma's guest had stayed awake, watching over the makeshift town, as Perfuma drifted off to sleep that night. When she woke up, her guest was still there. He didn't sleep; but was happy remaining rooted to the ground, perfectly still under the night's sky until a gaggle of children had pulled him away to watch their reenactment of She-Ra and Perfuma's attack on the Horde base. They still called him "Swampie", but he didn't seem to mind.

He no longer attracted as much interest as he did the previous day: a god among mortals never really becomes dull, but the people of Plumeria were famous for their wandering hearts and wandering interests. Even during the morning, many of them had already packed up tents and started their own journeys once again. The town had shrunk to a village by midday. A bit of Perfuma wanted to join the travellers. She recalled tales from long ago of how the princess of Plumeria would wander with them in innocent safety in her kingdom sized garden of earthly delights; but as the Horde grew in power the princesses grew reluctant to leave their rune stone defenceless, and so were forced to settle permanently beside it.

The people who hadn't moved were busy with foraging and cooking and cleaning; so once the children were called back to their families Perfuma was once again alone with her guest- the noise and activity of the village sinking into the background now Alec was no longer the centre of attention. Perfuma had decided that this was a good time to take her guest away from the crowd and into the more private shade deeper into Plumeria's forest.

"... This all... Brings back... Good memories..."

Alec spoke no where near sudden enough to be described as piping up, but he still caught Perfuma a little off guard as she walked leading her guest. Perhaps spotting her confusion, Alec continued:

"... I used to know... People like that... Long ago... I'm glad that... The universe... Still has a place for them..."

Perfuma smiled, but couldn't help but feel that everything her guest said just raised more questions. The phrase "the universe" was odd- most people in Eternia just referred to "the world" unless talking about the First Ones and that _somewhere else_ they came from before they arrived on Eternia. Meanwhile, the more her guest talked about times "long ago" the more it raised the question of just _how_ old her guest was. Though she was tempted, Perfuma didn't chase up these questions, at least not immediately.

"You know, you can stay as long as you want."

"I..." Alec started, but then paused. He didn't much in the way of body language, so much of it was a human habit that he had either grown out of or never had in the first place, but Perfuma could tell that he was considering the most careful way to put something. "... I cannot... I'm sorry... But I am bound... To a Green that is far... From this world... I have... _Obligations_ there... Obligations... And memories..."

"Far from this world? You mean-" Now it was Perfuma's turn to pause to search for the right words, but any thoughts of being careful didn't enter into it. Instead the implications were so big that no word seemed vast enough to capture what she wanted to get across. When she spoke again, surprise had given way to quiet, shock had given way to a whisper. "- you're like the First Ones? That you came here from lands beyond the sky?"

"... I think... The First Ones may have been... After my time..."

And with that, Perfuma had an answer about her guest's age. History in the capital H sense of the word comes about with the written record and attempts to control it, the times before then living on as folk traditions and myths. In the context of Eternia, Perfuma's guest was older than _both_. 

As she would later reflect, she probably should have expected an answer like that from a god. At the time though, she stood in shocked silence- squashed by that feeling of standing at the foot of a mountain or glacier, of something existing on a scale bigger than human comprehension, of things that have existed for infinity longer than human memory and will still exist when there are no more humans to remember it.

"... I... Will not be... Able to stay forever... But... If you would like... I could... Help you..."

With that Perfuma was brought out of her shock. A god though he may be, Alec was still Perfuma's guest afterall; and judging from his behaviour being older than civilization on Eternia just made him everyone's grandfather.

"You can help?" Perfuma let the question of _with what_ remain silent- implied but never spoken.

"... You said... Your mother wanted... To teach you the language... Of the Green... I... Think I can help..."

A bit of Perfuma was disappointed that Alec wasn't offering to help with the war, but this was a complicated sort of disappointment: Alec hadn't exactly been informed of all the gory details of the war and, if she was honest, if someone could avoid the war Perfuma couldn't find it within her to blame them for doing so.

"... I can sense... Your power... I think what you are lacking... Is _perception_..." Alec's form shifted slightly but noticeably, weight growing across his back and his posture changing to accommodate it. With his form changed, one arm reached across his back, gave a twist, and when it came back into Perfuma's view it held a fruit- no, a tuber, similar to a sweet potato. "... I... Can help with perception..."

Perfuma's eyes widened as she realised what she was meant to do with the tuber. She knew of old tales of gods feeding their followers their flesh _-this is my body, broken for you-_ on a symbolic level if not a literal one, in order for communion of a sorts between god and congregation _-this is my blood, poured out for you-_ but she had never dreamed of taking part in it herself. 

But then, she never thought she'd meet a god.

"... To eat it is to share... A little of my mind... Of my perceptions... I used to do it with someone I loved long ago... And in times past... others would eat it... To search for tranquility or enlightenment..." Alec mused, a hint of melancholy entering his voice. "... When used... Together with your power... You could commune with the Green..."

Perfuma was struck speechless as she took the tuber from her guest. She wanted to say something. She wanted to put into words that the tuber she was holding was a conceptual cliff her mind was poised on the edge of: at once exhilarating and utterly terrifying. But no matter how she tried, the right words didn't come to her. 

Realising she was never going to find the words she wanted to say, Perfuma sighed, then took a deep breathe. Eyes closed, she bit into the tuber...

\---

_Light!_

Perfuma's eyes opened to _light_.

The green shade of the forest trail had been replaced with a firefly gala, a thousand tiny lights dancing in the air and scuttling at her feet, painting the trail with the colours of a thousand little sunsets. Perfuma looked at Alec: stared wide eyed through his mossy skin at the glittering gemstone lights crawling within him. Perfuma looked at herself and saw _yes_ she was alight! _Yes_ she was burning bright like the sun!

"The lights?! Is this..."

"... Insects... Animals... _Life_..."

Perfuma stared child like at the beauty that had been in front of her all of her life yet hidden by the limitations of her all too human senses. Was this really how he guessed saw the world? Would she ever be able to explain these sights and these feelings to anyone else?

She could not think on these questions for long, for she could feel, just out of focus, the presence of other forces. Trying to empty her mind, trying to achieve that needed focus through meditation, Perfuma breathed in-

_and she was asleep in a bed of sand protected from the desert heat by her casing and depths of the dune in which she slept not dead but dreaming carrying millennia of genetic history woven inside of her ready to wake and burst forth turning the desert sands vivid green and all it needed was once in a decade rains to spill forth from the heavens_

-and Perfuma breathed, reeling from her far off vision. There were no deserts near Plumeria, so... How far did this new sense extend? Trying again to focus, Perfuma breathed in-

_and she was a mighty oak a crown of crow's nests perched atop her head and a cloak of moss stretching across her shoulders and flowing down her back and she was **ancient** indeed so many tree rings each ring capturing dust and atmosphere and dirt a year captured in every ring a time machine a library the animals and meat could decode but never truly read and Perfuma was a well stocked library indeed_

-and Perfuma nearly collapsed: her head was spinning so much. Crow's nests atop her head? Moss on her shoulders and back? That wasn't right... Was it? Was it just her nervous system translating the canopy and trunk into a human's nearest equivalent? Or was it... Whatever she was communing with that was translating for her? Thinking to try once again, Perfuma breathed in-

_and her body lay spread over a valley spore capped heads jutting out of the soil while her threads stretched through entangled in every tree root her waste feeding every flower and blade of grass and their rot feeding her in return and there is no way of dividing any these from each other or from Perfuma because there is no division all a linked in her threads with no centre every point a centre every point a potential new web of threads and there yet there no division that a fallacy of meat that has no place in the threads and rhizomes and soil_

-and this was too much for her, being not one being but many, her senses stretched over a whole valley to the point of being more geography than a person, it was too much all at once. Perfuma fell to her knees, sweat pouring off her head as she gasped for breath.

"... If it is... Too much... You don't... Have to push yourself..."

Perfuma looked up to see Alec sat down beside her, his concern for her waning as she regained her strength. As Perfuma regained her composure, Alec smiled gently, watching the neon lights leave water colour trails through the air.

"... We don't... Have to go further... If you want we could... Not explore anymore... We could just watch..." Alec gestured towards the lights. "... And recover..."

Perfuma steadied her breath and stood up. As far as she was concerned, she did not kick the Horde out of Plumeria and learn to enjoy hitting people with flowers to start backing down in the face of a challenge.

"No Alec." Even as Perfuma's eyes filled with determination, her features brightened, an enthusiastic smile blossoming forth. "I've learned so much. I... I don't want to stop now."

After a moment of thought, Alec made a suggestion:

"... If you want to learn more... I think you might be able... To visit the Green yourself..."

"But wasn't I contacting it just now?"

"... They were... Flowers sprouting from the soil... Not the infinitely greater roots... From which they grew..." Alec paused for thought, giving out a slow rumble like a huge creaking tree where an animal would have taken a breath. "... The Green exists... On a different spiritual plane... From what I understand... Your power... Taps into it... To access the Green... Your power would work in reverse... Your soul leaving your body to travel there..."

"Wait- if my soul left my body," More than a little fear entered Perfuma's voice at this new knowledge. "Would I be able to get back?"

"... I have carried souls back from the afterlife... If you couldn't return under your own power... I could bring you back... That is... If you still want to go..."

Perfuma took a deep breath, trying to banish her fears. Only when she was confident that any remaining fear wouldn't show in her voice did she say "Yes."

"... Very well..." Alec moved to lie down, roots sprouting across his body and digging into the soil. "... I'll leave for the Green first... I'll open... A _channel_... For your soul to flow down..."

Perfuma nodded and sat down with her back leaning into a tree. She tried reaching out to Alec with her power, relaxing her body as she

Let

Go

And all at once Perfuma's attempt to relax became something else. The feeling of sinking into a warm bed overcame her, the beauty of a great fall without the fear of its terminal end. This stretched out for what felt like eternity, until it to was dwarfed by experience stripped of the material nature of "sinking" or "falling", a feeling simply of 

D

O

W

N

-

Perfuma wasn't sure when her soul arrived in the Green, the experience of entering it blurred until she couldn't find the dividing line between the two planes. It wasn't like her earlier attempts to commune with the Green, with the cacophony of her nervous system trying to capture and transmit experiences fundamentally alien to it. No, here she had no material body to get in the way.

Instead she felt

Serene.

Calm.

Like there had been a noise- oppressive yet subtle- constantly in the background all her life.

Only now she was free of it.

And left at peace

With beautiful quiet.

She had no body here, and therefore didn't really have senses in the material sense of the word.

She couldn't see, but when she left the Green she left with the impression of soothing green, of a gently stretching and slowly coiling web of roots and fibres.

She couldn't touch, but when she left she would recall the feeling of peaceful warmth as if she were embraced by a blanket of meadows and glades and softest undergrowth.

She couldn't hear, but nevertheless Alec's voice echoed in her mind.

"Perfuma? Are you..."

Voiceless, Perfuma spoke back:

_I'm here Alec. I've made it._

"... Good..."

_Its wonderful Alec. But... What can we do in a place like this?_

"... What... Were you doing... Before you came here?"

_Exploring._

"... Then we can do the same... Just with no animal senses... To get in the way..."

Perfuma experimentally reached out again with her power as she did in the mortal world...

And she was a small birch tree- dying, slowly consumed by rot.

She was fungi- spreading its threads through the tree.

She was the compost the tree left behind- rich black and full of life.

She was bulbs and saplings and tubers- bursting out of the compost.

Death is here, but not an unproductive death.

A death that more than any other.

Can't be separated from new life.

Perfuma's soul stretched and contorted, fitting a thousand different bodies. 

Until something gave her pause.

Without touch, she felt a rend in the world she had been drifting in. A bubble in the ocean. A scar across the surface of healthy skin.

_Alec... What is this?_

"... A wound... Across the surface of the Green... On my world... There are many old ones... This one is fresh..."

Scared for the first time since entering this world, Perfuma paused, before she experimentally reached into the rend...

... And to her surprise, the world she reached was not completely dead. Moulds and slimes slithered along sewer pipes, algaes and sturdy lichens crept across concrete. Other Green life was merely dormant: seeds and spores and root systems sleeping, waiting for the right moment for cracks to form in the land of metal those stupid men had built on top of it. After a moment of her strange astral senses realigning, Perfuma started looking at the fleshy things that scurried through the shadows of this artificial world. Even here there were traces of the Green: seeds in their digestive track, pollen and spores lining their throat and lungs.

Perfuma felt a pang of horror as she realised what this meant she could do with her powers.

And a moment later, she was sorely tempted to do just that.

This was of course the Horde, but Perfuma's malice was new. Before, she had clashed with the front lines of the Horde.

This time, she discovered the poor souls trapped inside of it.

As a creeping slime mould, she saw a rubbish tip the size of a mountain; a place for machines too old or broken for the Horde to use used as a home for people too old or broken for the Horde to use. Masses of rags and withered limbs would climb out every night to scavenge for food away from the eyes of the patrols and drones.

Sprouting as moss from a leaky pipe, she found herself surrounded by endless assembly lines and the deafening din of heaving, whirling machinery. Before the horrid _noise_ became more than she could stand, she saw the shuffling, pallid bodies that worked there. Breathing in smog and never seeing sunlight, there eyes empty and tired, after years of work and toil and the occasional beating they all knew that they were as much machines as the assembly lines they worked on. Personhood was a luxury for force captains. Like the machines they worked on they existed to work until their age caught up with them or they were a little too slow at avoiding the limb wrecking metal grasp of the assembly line machines.

From the vantage point of a lily kept in a vase decorating the window of an officer's cabin, she looked over a parade ground at children who couldn't be older than 12 learning their place in the Horde. 11 stood in a row, some singing out a marching song, some playing the drums or pipe. All visibly terrified. One of their number had been taken out of sight for punishment, and as they were ordered to put on a song so that their commanding officers wouldn't be distracted by their friend's muffled screams.

Horror after horror, nightmare after nightmare, it was all too much for Perfuma. 

Her soul retreated back from the rend. 

Back from the metal world it led to.

Back to the Green.

But as her soul retreated, Perfuma brought back something foreign to the Green.

Rage.

A well of wrath with no end to its depths.

She tried to speak.

To talk to Alec.

A blood curdling howl came out instead.

She wanted to cry, but had no eyes to weep.

She wanted to destroy, but had no fists with which to fight.

She wanted to scream until her throat was raw and her lungs hurt.

But without body, she couldn't even have the catharsis of pain.

And there was Alec.

The Green pulled back.

As if retreating from a furnace.

But bodyless, Alec pulled her close.

Without skin to feel, Perfuma felt a hug.

Without eyes to weep, Perfuma had a shoulder to cry on.

Alone in what she had seen, Perfuma was not alone in her sorrow.

_Can't the Green heal that scar? The Green is not the only being it hurts._

Quiet, Perfuma's voiceless words echoed melancholy.

Just as quiet, Alec answered.

"... The Green is healing it... But it is slow... The Green doesn't conquer... It endures... The Green doesn't make war... It outlasts... But I sense... That you do not have that luxury..."

_I don't, but the people I saw have it even less. They have so much hurt, and all I can do is try to stop the force that is hurting them from spreading._

"... I think... You might be able to do more..."

_what?_

"... You draw... A small amount of power... From the Green... All you need... Is more..."

_But... How?_

"... Ask..."

And so.

Perfuma asked.

And the Green answered.

\---

Kyle adjusted the daisy chain crown his boyfriend had made for him; eyes gazing out of the ruined, ivy chocked hanger they had taken as a shelter to marvel at the brilliant morning light. Rogelio, still half asleep, instinctively hugged Kyle tighter; his reptilian body hungry for Kyle's warmth.

As much as they had tried, they couldn't be together when the Horde ruled the Fright Zone, not really. The Horde understood relationships as a way of making more soldiers and as an expression of power. Something as soft and gentle as what Kyle and Rogelio wanted was just a weakness to be stamped out. 

But then, almost overnight, the Horde was no more. 

There was no fear of what would happen when he failed. Delicious fruits were always a stones throw away, and the air tasted so sweet that Kyle almost couldn't believe it. Dull grey and grime had given way to vivid greens and flowers in every colour of the rainbow. Kyle's personal hell, had given way to his personal paradise. A world without combat drills, or the casual cruelties of the force captains, or crying yourself to sleep in the dead of night when you acknowledge that is no escape.

Catra had disappeared to who knows where. Unable to stop worrying, Scorpia had disappeared after her. Entrapta, now without a lab, had decided to go back to her kingdom. Lonnie and some other foot soldiers, now having nothing better to do, decided to join her. No one had heard anything from Shadow Weaver or Hordak.

And Kyle had never been so happy in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I've been stuck with writer's block for over a month. What you just read was the fic that gave me the block. I'm still not sure if I like how it turned out, but I'm glad I'm done with it.
> 
> Now, I'm going to assume most of you are from the She-Ra fandom (last I checked, Swamp Thing had less than 20 fics up here). As you can see, I'm leaning a lot into the magic as technology/magic from technology/is-this-sci-fi aspect a tad at the beginning with the assumption that Eternia was a colony world of some kind, but I tried to keep it vague enough that if the show reveals anything I won't look too wrong.
> 
> As for Perfuma's mother, I'd just like to note that a) the first season has all the characters acting within the shadow of the first princess alliance which, notably, failed at fighting a war with the Horde; and b) very few characters are shown to have parents. You do the maths.
> 
> Now, if you're a Swamp Thing fan or for some reason care about DC continuity, you may have noticed that I have completely ignored everything that happened after the ending of Alan Moore's run on Saga of the Swamp Thing and just assumed that human life on Earth goes the way of the dinosaurs at one point afterwards. This is simply because I felt that Alan Moore's last Swamp Thing comic was the best possible capital E ending for the character. It might be possible to do a Swamp Thing story instead of a story that merely has Swamp Thing/Alec Holland in it (as I feel I've written here) but why would you want to?
> 
> And some other stuff of note: yes, what Perfuma does to the Fright Zone is a more ruthless version of what Swampie does to Gotham city, with Perfuma not feeling inclined to offer the Horde any terms of surrender. Also, the bit in the Fright Zone on the parade ground drew heavily from a similar scene from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
> 
> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
